MacMurray professor joins national blog

September 2, 2011

JACKSONVILLE, IL – MacMurray professor Allan Metcalf has joined the team of contributors to “Lingua Franca,” a blog on writing hosted by the Chronicle of Higher Education’s website.

Metcalf’s first entry, “Some Rules are Nice and Simple. But …” was posted last week. It looks at one of the “rules” we think we should follow in formal writing – never begin a sentence with “and” or “but” -- which has little basis in either tradition or grammar. Click here to see the blog post.

The Chronicle of Higher Education is the leading professional publication in academia. He joins four other contributors to the Lingua Franca blog. Metcalf expects to blog weekly on various aspects of writing and language.

“I couldn’t resist the opportunity to reach a national audience,” Metcalf said. “And to keep readers awake, I try to make at least one outrageous statement about language in every post. Outrageous but true, of course.”

Metcalf is a professor of English and the registrar at MacMurray College, executive secretary of the American Dialect Society, and author of OK: The Improbable Story of America's Greatest Word and five other books on language.